Voltaire's history of Charles XII, king of Sweden · Voltaire
BOOK VIII
This affair was to be carried through with profound secrecy, and elaborate preparations were necessary: these two are incompatible. Gortz planned to go as far as Asia in his quest, and though the means seemed undesirable, it would at least bring men, money and ships to Sweden, which could be used for an attack on Scotland. For some time the pirates of all nations, and especially the English, had banded themselves together to infest the seas of Europe and America; they had received no quarter and had retired to Madagascar, a large island on the east coast of Africa; they were quite desperate, and famed for actions which would have made them heroes had they been legal. They wanted a prince to take them under his protection, but international law shut them out from every harbour. When they heard that Charles XII was returned to Sweden they hoped that, as he was devoted to war and forced to take share in it, and needed a fleet and soldiers, he would be glad to make terms with them. So they sent a deputy, who travelled to Europe in a Dutch ship, to propose to Baron Gortz that they might be received at Gothenburg, where they promised to prepare three-score ships loaded with treasure. The Baron persuaded the King to agree, and two Swedes were sent to negotiate with them. Then more honourable and substantial help came from Cardinal Alberoni, who directed the government of Spain long enough for his own reputation but not for the good and glory of that kingdom.
He took up the project of setting James II’s son on the English throne with great enthusiasm. But as he had only just taken up the ministry, and Spain was to be settled before he could attempt to overthrow thrones, it appeared that there was no great likelihood of his undertaking the task at present. Yet in two years he had done so much for Spain, and had so raised her prestige in Europe that he had got the Turks (it is reported) to attack the Emperor. Then he took steps to remove the Duke of Orleans from the Regency and King George from the English throne. Such danger lies in the power of one single man who is absolute, and has the sense and capacity to use his power. Gortz, having made this beginning in the Courts of Russia and Spain, went secretly to France, and thence to Holland, where he interviewed representatives of the Pretender’s party. He got special information concerning the strength, number, and position of the disaffected in England, what money they could raise, and what men they could put in the field. They only wanted 10,000 men, with which they would feel assured of success. Count Gyllemburg, the Swedish ambassador in England, acting under Gortz’s instructions, had several meetings with the disaffected; he encouraged them and promised them all they wanted. The Pretender’s party even advanced considerable sums, which Gortz received in Holland, and with which he bought ships and ammunition.
Then he secretly sent some officers to France, especially a certain Folard, who, having served in thirty French campaigns without mending his fortune, had volunteered with Charles, not with any ulterior motive, but just to serve under a prince with such a reputation. He especially hoped to get the Prince to adopt the new discoveries he had made in the art of war, which he had studied theoretically and had published views of in a commentary of Polybius. Charles was pleased with his ideas, and, as he was never governed by convention, he intended to make use of Folard in his attack on Scotland. The main point for Baron de Gortz was to settle a peace between Charles and the Czar, in spite of the many difficulties in the way. Baron Osterman, a man of weight in Russia, was not so ready to agree with Gortz. He was as cautious as the other was enthusiastic. One was for letting things gradually ripen, the other wanted to reap and sow together. Osterman was afraid his master, pleased with the plan, would grant too advantageous terms with Sweden, and so delayed the conclusion of the matter. Luckily for Gortz the Czar himself came to Holland at the beginning of 1717 on the way to France, for he had yet to see this nation, criticized, envied, and imitated by all Europe. He wanted to satisfy his insatiable curiosity, but also he hoped to arrange some political matters.
Gortz had two talks with the Emperor at the Hague, and did more by their means than he could have done in six months with plenipotentiaries. Everything went well, his great plans seemed quite unsuspected, and he hoped they would only be known to Europe in their execution. The first who discovered these intrigues was the Duke of Orleans, Regent of France, who had spies everywhere. The Duke, having personal obligations to the King of England, made the discovery of the whole plot against him. At the same time the Dutch, having suspicions of Gortz’s behaviour, communicated them to the English ministry. Gortz and Gyllemburg were getting on with their schemes rapidly, when one was arrested at the Hague and the other in London. As Gyllemburg had broken international law by the conspiracy they did not scruple in England to attack his person. But it was thought exceedingly strange that the States-General imprisoned Baron Gortz out of mere friendship for the King of England. They even went so far as to appoint Count Velderen to question him. This was going very far, and as it turned out, only added to their confusion. Gortz asked Velderen if he knew him. “Yes,” said the Dutchman. “Well, then,” he answered, “you must then be aware that I shall only answer what I like.”
All the foreign ministers protested against the wrong done to the persons of Gortz and Gyllemburg. Nothing could excuse the Dutch from breaking so sacred a law in seizing the King of Sweden’s premier, who had never done anything against them, and so violating the spirit of freedom which has attracted so many strangers and has been the cause of her greatness. The King of England acted within his rights in seizing an enemy, so that the letters found among Gyllemburg’s papers from him to Gortz were printed to justify the King’s proceedings. The King of Sweden was in Scania when the printed letters came with the news of his ministers having been seized. He only smiled and asked if his letters were printed too, and ordered the English ambassador and all his family to be seized. But he could not take the same vengeance on the Dutch, because they had no minister then at the Court of Sweden. He kept a disdainful silence towards England and Holland.
The Czar’s behaviour was just the opposite: as he was not named but only hinted at by distant references in the letters of Gortz and Gyllemburg, he wrote a long letter full of congratulations to the King of England on the discovery, with assurances of his good-will. King George received his protestations with incredulity, but pretended to believe them. A plot laid by private men is at an end when once discovered, but where kings are concerned a discovery only makes it go further. The Czar came to Paris in 1717, and did not spend all his time in viewing the wonders of art and nature there: the academies, public libraries, cabinets of the antiquaries and royal palaces. He made a proposal to the Regent which, had it been accepted, would have put the finishing touch to the greatness of Russia. It was this: to himself ally with the King of Sweden, who would yield many countries to him, to take from the Danes their power in the Baltic, to weaken England by a civil war, and to attract to Russia all the trade of the North. He had thoughts, too, of setting up Stanislas against King Augustus, so that when the fire was kindled in all directions he could fan the flame or damp it as he saw fit. With these views he proposed to the King’s Regent to mediate between Sweden and Russia, and to make an offensive and defensive alliance with them and Spain. The treaty, though so natural and so useful to the nations concerned, putting into their hands the balancing of power in Europe, was yet rejected by Orleans, for he did just the opposite and made a league with the Emperor and the King of England.
Political motives were then so powerful with all princes that the Czar was going to declare war against his old friend Augustus, and to help Charles his mortal enemy; while France, for the sake of the English and Germans, was going to declare war against a grandson of Louis XIV, after having so long supported him at great expenditure of blood and treasure against those very enemies. All that the Czar could obtain was that the Regent should interpose for the freeing of Baron Gortz and Gyllemburg. He returned to Russia about the end of June, having shown a rare example of an emperor travelling to improve his mind. But what most of the French people saw of him was a rough, unpolished exterior, the result of his education, while they were blind to the legislator and the genius who had founded a new nation. What he had sought for in Orleans he soon found in Alberoni, who governed all Spain. Alberoni wanted to restore the Pretender: first as the minister of Spain, so ill-used by the English, and secondly because he had a personal quarrel with the Duke of Orleans for his close alliance with England against Spain; besides, he was a priest of that Church for which the Pretender’s father had lost his crown.
The Duke of Ormond, as unpopular in England as the Duke of Marlborough was admired, had left the country at the time of George’s accession, and was now in Spain. He went with full powers from the King of Spain to meet the Czar, in Courland, accompanied by a certain D’Irnegan, an Englishman of ability and daring. The business was to ask the Princess Anna, the Czar’s daughter, for marriage with James’s son, in the hopes that such an alliance would bring the Czar over to the King’s side. Baron Gortz, among his other schemes, had intended this lady for the Duke of Holstein, who did marry her later. As soon as he heard of the Duke of Ormond’s plan he grew jealous and did what he could to defeat it. He left prison in August with the Count Gyllemburg, without any apology from the Swedish to the English King. At the same time the English ambassador and his family were released at Stockholm, where their treatment had been a great deal worse than Gyllemburg’s in London.
Gortz at liberty was an implacable enemy, for besides his other aims he now sought vengeance. He went post-haste to the Czar, who was now better pleased with him than ever, for he undertook to remove in less than three months all obstacles to a peace with Sweden. He took up a map which the Czar had drawn himself, and, drawing a line from Wibourg, by Lake Ladoga, up to the frozen ocean, promised to bring his master to part with all that lay east of that line, besides Carelia, Ingria, and Livonia. Then he mentioned the marriage of the Czar’s daughter to the Duke of Holstein, holding out hopes that the Duke would readily give his country instead, and if once he became a member of the Empire the Imperial crown would, of course, come to him or some of his descendants. The Czar named the isle of Aland for the conferences between Osterman and Gortz; he asked the English Duke of Ormond to withdraw lest the English Court should take alarm. But D’Irnegan, his confidant, remained in the town with many precautions, for he only went out at night and never saw the Czar’s ministers but in the disguise of either a peasant or a Tartar. As soon as the Duke of Ormond went, the Czar impressed upon the King his courtesy in having sent away the chief partisan of the Pretender, and Baron Gortz returned to Sweden with great hopes of success.
He found his master at the head of 30,000 troops with all the coast guarded by militia. The King needed nothing but money, but he had no credit at home or abroad. France, under the Duke of Orleans, would give him none. He was promised money from Spain, but that country was not yet in a position to support him. Baron Gortz then tried a project he had tried before. He gave copper the same value as silver, so that a copper coin whose intrinsic value was a halfpenny might, with the royal mark, pass for thirty or forty pence, just as the governors of besieged towns have sometimes paid their soldiers with leather money till they could get better. Such expedients may be useful in a free country, and have often been the salvation of a republic, but they are sure to ruin a monarchy, for the people quickly lose confidence, the minister is unable to keep faith, the money paper increases, individuals bury their specie, and the whole plan fails, often with disastrous results. This was the case in Sweden. Baron Gortz had paid out his new coin with discretion, but was soon carried beyond what he had intended by forces he could not check. Everything became excessively dear, so that he was obliged to multiply his copper coin. The more there was of it the less was its value. Sweden was inundated with this false money, and one and all complained of Gortz. So great was the veneration of the people for Charles that they could not hate him, so the weight of their displeasure fell on the minister who, as a foreigner and financier, was sure to suffer their opprobrium.
A tax that he arranged on the clergy gave the final touch to the universal hatred; priests are only too ready to plead that their cause is God’s, and publicly declared him an atheist, because he asked for their money. The new coins were embossed with the figure of heathen gods, and hence they called them the gods of Gortz. The ministry joined in the universal hatred of him, all the more ardently because they were powerless. None in the country liked him except the King, whom his unpopularity confirmed in his affection. He placed absolute confidence in him, giving him also his entire confidence at home. He trusted to him, too, all negotiations with the Czar, especially as to the conference at Aland, which of all things he wished to urge on with the greatest haste. As soon as Gortz had completed at Stockholm the arrangements for the treasury which demanded his presence, he went away to complete with Osterman the great work he had in hand. These were the preliminaries of that alliance which was to have changed the face of affairs in Europe, as they were found among Gortz’s papers. The Czar was to keep Livonia, part of Ingria, and Carelia, leaving the rest to Sweden. He was to join Charles in restoring Stanislas, and to send to Poland 80,000 men to dethrone the very king on whose side he had been fighting for so many years before; he was to supply ships to carry 30,000 to Germany and 10,000 to England; the forces of both were to attack the King of England’s German dominions, especially Bremen and Verden; the same troops were to restore the Duke of Holstein and force the King of Prussia to an agreement by parting with a good deal of his new acquisitions.
Charles acted henceforth as if his own victorious troops had done all this, and demanded of the Emperor the execution of the peace of Altranstadt. But the Court of Vienna scarcely deigned an answer to one whom they feared so little. The King of Poland was not altogether so safe, but saw the storm coming. Fleming was the most suspicious man alive and the least reliable. He suspected the designs of the Czar and the King of Sweden in favour of Stanislas, so he endeavoured to have him taken off to Deux Ponts, as James Sobieski had been in Silesia. But Stanislas was on his guard, and the design miscarried. In the meantime Charles was making a second attempt upon Norway in October 1718. He had so arranged matters that he hoped to be master of the country in six months. The winter is fierce enough in Sweden to kill the animals that live there, but he chose to go and conquer rocks where the climate is more severe and the snow and ice much worse than in Sweden, instead of trying to regain his beautiful provinces in Germany. He hoped his new alliance with the Czar would soon make it possible for him to retake them, and his ambition was gratified by the thought of taking a kingdom from his victorious foe.
At the mouth of the river Tistendall, near the bay of Denmark, between Bahus and Anslo, stands Fredericshall, a place of strength and importance, which is considered the key to the kingdom. Charles began its siege in December. The cold was so extreme that the soldiers could hardly break the ground. It was like digging trenches in rock, but the Swedes were nothing daunted by fatigue which the King shared so readily. Charles had never suffered so severely. His constitution was so hardened by sixteen years’ hardship that he would sleep in the open in a Norwegian mid-winter on boards or straw, wrapped only in his mantle, and yet keep his health. Some of the soldiers fell dead at their posts, but others who were nearly dying dare not complain when they saw their King bearing it all. Just before this expedition he heard of a woman who had lived for several months on nothing but water, and he who had tried all his life to bear the hardest extremes that nature can bear resolved to try how long he could fast. He neither ate nor drank for five days, and on the sixth, in the morning, he rode two leagues to his brother’s, where he ate heartily, yet neither his large meal nor his long fast incommoded him. With such a body of iron, and a soul of so much strength and courage, there was not one of his neighbours who did not fear him.
On the 11th of December, St. Andrew’s day, he went to view his trenches at about nine in the evening, and finding the parallel not advanced as much as he wished, he was a little vexed at it. But M. Megret, the French engineer who was conducting the siege, told him the place would be taken in eight days’ time. “We shall see,” said the King, “what can be done.” Then, going on with the engineer to examine the works, he stopped at the place where the branch made an angle with the parallel; kneeling upon the inner slope, he leaned with his elbows on the parapet, to look at the men who were carrying on the entrenching by starlight. The least details relating to the death of such a man as Charles are noted. It is therefore my duty to say that all the conversation reported by various writers, as having taken place between the King and the engineer, are absolutely false. This is what I know actually happened.
The King stood with half his body exposed to a battery of cannon directed precisely at the angle where he stood. No one was near him but two Frenchmen: one was M. Siquier, his _aide-de-camp_, a man of capacity and energy, who had entered his service in Turkey, and was particularly attached to the Prince of Hesse; the other was the engineer. The cannon fired grape-shot, and the King was more exposed than any of them. Not far behind was Count Sveren, who was commanding the trenches. At this moment Siquier and Megret saw the King fall on the parapet, with a deep sigh; they came near, but he was already dead. A ball weighing half-a-pound had struck him on the right temple, leaving a hole large enough to turn three fingers in; his head had fallen over the parapet, his left eye was driven in and his right out of its socket; death had been instantaneous, but he had had strength to put his hand to his sword, and lay in that posture. At this sight Megret, an extraordinary and feelingless man, said, “Let us go to supper. The play is done.” Siquier hastened to tell the Count Sveren, and they all agreed to keep it a secret till the Prince of Hesse could be informed. They wrapped the corpse in a grey cloak, Siquier put on his hat and wig; he was carried under the name of Captain Carlsbern through the troops, who saw their dead King pass, little thinking who it was.
The Prince at once gave orders that no one should stir out of the camp, and that all the passes to Sweden should be guarded, till he could arrange for his wife to succeed to the crown, and exclude the Duke of Holstein, who might aim at it. Thus fell Charles XII, King of Sweden, at the age of thirty-six and a half, having experienced the extremes of prosperity and of adversity, without being softened by the one or in the least disturbed by the other. All his actions, even those of his private life, are almost incredible. Perhaps he was the only man, and certainly he was the only king who never showed weakness; he carried all the heroic virtues to that excess at which they become faults as dangerous as the opposed virtues. His resolution, which became obstinacy, caused his misfortunes in Ukrania, and kept him five years in Turkey. His liberality degenerated into prodigality, and ruined Sweden. His courage, degenerating into rashness, was the cause of his death. His justice had been sometimes cruel, and in later years his maintenance of his prerogative came not far short of tyranny. His great qualities, any one of which would immortalize another prince, were a misfortune to his country. He never began a quarrel; but he was rather implacable than wise in his anger. He was the first whose ambition it was to be a conqueror, without wishing to increase his dominions. He desired to gain kingdoms with the object of giving them away. His passion for glory, war, and vengeance made him too little of a politician, without which none has ever been a conqueror. Before a battle he was full of confidence, very modest after a victory, and undaunted in defeat. Sparing others no more than himself, he made small account of his own and his subjects’ labours; he was an extraordinary rather than a great man, and rather to be imitated than admired. But his life may be a lesson to kings and teach them that a peaceful and happy reign is more desirable than so much glory.
Charles XII was tall and well shaped. He had a fine forehead, large blue eyes, full of gentleness, and a well-shaped nose, but the lower part of his face was disagreeable and not improved by his laugh, which was unbecoming. He had little beard or hair, he spoke little, and often answered only by the smile which was habitual to him. Profound silence was preserved at his table. With all his inflexibility he was timid and bashful; he would have been embarrassed by conversation, because, as he had given up his whole life to practical warfare, he knew nothing of the ways of society. Before his long leisure in Turkey he had never read anything but Cæsar’s commentaries and the history of Alexander, but he had made some observations on war, and on his own campaigns from 1700-1709; he told this to the Chevalier Folard, and said that the MSS. had been lost at the unfortunate battle of Pultawa. As to religion, though a prince’s sentiments ought not to influence other men, and though the opinion of a king so ill-informed as Charles should have no weight in such matters, yet men’s curiosity on this point too must be satisfied. I have it from the person who has supplied me with most of my material for this history, that Charles was a strict Lutheran till the year 1707, when he met the famous philosopher Leibniz, who was a great freethinker, and talked freely, and had already converted more than one prince to his views. I do not believe that Charles imbibed freethought in conversation with this philosopher, since they only had a quarter of an hour together; but M. Fabricius, who lived familiarly with him seven years afterwards, told me that in his leisure in Turkey, having come in contact with diverse forms of faith, he went further still.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.